An hour later finds us seated at a half-moon booth in front of a stage in a dim, romantic lounge. Set before us on a tiny table are two tall, blue cocktails Ben ordered for us with tiny umbrellas and pineapple chunk garnishes. A beautiful, long-limbed woman sits at a stool in a green dress, her red lips making love to a microphone as she sings. A quartet of musicians on string instruments—a cello, bass, violin, and a bearded man with a viola—provide the backdrop to her powerful voice, upon which our ears feed.
My eyes, however, are plenty fed by the man I’m cuddled up next to in this booth at the front of the lounge. He could show me twenty mariachis and a hundred beautiful singers and a thousand white-sanded beaches; all I need to fill my heart is just a single glance into his eyes.
Yep, I just said that. I’m one of those guys now.
Also, I might be a little drunk already. “Are there two singers on the stage or one?” I ask Ben quietly, feeling silly and excited for no reason at all.
He smiles at me, amused. “It doesn’t take much, does it.”
“Not at all. I don’t even know what I’m drinking. It tastes like fruit laundry detergent, except it’s … like … good?” I take another sip, just to be sure. The sip turns into a gulp. “Really, really sugary. Kinda like a blue raspberry Popsicle that’s melted.”
I get a laugh out of Ben, who shakes his head. “You need a bit of training before you can handle more than just one drink in a night. You’re acting hammered and you’ve barely—”
“Hey, now. I’m not drunk! Also, I think it’s after midnight.”
“It’s two in the morning.”
“TWO?!” I blurt, then slap a hand over my mouth. The singer onstage smiles at me while she sings, her attention drawn by my tiny outburst. I shrink into Ben’s side. “Oh, no. I am drunk. I’m one of those loud drunks I always make fun of.”
“You want to head back to the cabana? Relax and slip into the silkiest, cushiest bed sheets your skin has ever touched?”
“Yes! But after a dance.”
Ben’s face goes rigid at once. “I don’t dance.”
I leap up from my seat and excitedly grab Ben by the hand, pulling him up to his feet despite his legs turning into lead and my hip nearly knocking over my drink, if it weren’t for the sturdiness of the tiny table it sits on. I pull Ben to a small clearing, put a hand at the small of his back, and clasp his hand with my other. I take the lead in a little slow dance, swaying with the music onstage.
Ben’s face, for once, is the one blushing. “Trevor …”
“I don’t want to hear any more protests,” I demand. “This is my birthday weekend, and so we honor my wishes. And right now, all I wish is to dance with my boyfriend and enjoy the music.”
His eyes flash. “Boyfriend …?”
I freeze in his arms. My feet stop moving. I didn’t even realize I’d said it. Can I blame the alcohol and call it a slip of the loosened tongue, playing it off?
I look up into his eyes. “Shut up. I’m drunk.”
“Are we boyfriends now?”
He won’t let it go. “It just slipped.” I bury my face in his chest, then distractingly remind myself how firm and shapely his pecs are. “Your chest is making me horny,” I whisper to him, though with my swimming state of mind considered, it probably came out in a hollering moan.
“You smell great,” he murmurs into my hair.
I crumble under him, clinging tighter as we dance in slow circles to the sound of singing strings and a woman’s soft vibrato. “You smell like sexy,” I moan back.
He chuckles. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does to me,” I retort smugly.
“Are you sure I don’t smell like boyfriend?”
I reach down and grip his ass tightly, squeezing it, but I meant to smack it for that jape of his. Ben draws his head back to look at me, smirking as he figures out what I’m trying to do.
“We should probably get back to the room,” I decide in a tiny voice, “before I try to form a comeback and accidentally take off my pants on this dance floor instead.”
He pulls me against his body tighter—so tightly our crotches grind against one another. That doesn’t help my giddiness at all, pulling every ounce of my mind straight to our swelling cocks, the heat coming off my face from the alcohol—and my sudden and unexplained desire to take off all our clothes.
If we didn’t have the attention of the whole place already, we certainly do now.
Ben puts a finger under my chin to lift it to his lips, which come down from the muscular mountain of him for a kiss. “Good idea,” Ben finally agrees when he pulls away.